Improving Design Generation by Interface Configuration Propagation

Abstract:
This paper describes a new approach to increase design productivity which integrates a new design flow into Infineons RTL-Code Generation Framework. The proposed methodology is centered around the use of interfaces which encapsulate and group together ports with associated functionality. This reduces manual wiring complexity and leads to more comprehensible and straightforward designs. The key contribution of this work is the propagation of interface properties, among connected interfaces. Further, the implementation of components can adapt to the configuration of its interfaces and thus can provide a different timing and functional behavior if required. This reduces configuration effort and increases consistency. It enables designers to fully or partially configure interfaces according to a base interface model at appropriate points, leaving others undefined, which will be configured automatically. The new design flow is applied to the design of a Direct Memory Access (DMA) component, successfully proving the concept.